Owens stated in a 1995 speech on the House floor that during the Africanslave trade more than 200,000,000 people were thrown over the sides of the slave ships which carried them across the Atlantic, permanently disrupting the ecology and causing sharks to follow any and all ships since the trade was stopped in the 1850s. This figure worked out to be 152 slaves taken aboard nine ships per day for 200 years to get the total amount of slaves thrown overboard. After reworking his absurd figure down to 100,000,000 slaves, Owens' claim was picked up by ABC News, which reported the claim as "fact".[1][2][3]